61
Banks (LABs) and Urban Cooperative Banks (UCBs). As on September 10,
2012, the RBI has disbursed
`
23,200 crore, while a nominal sum of
`
81
crore is held back by the RBI, either for further payments or refunded to the
Government.
As for the number of beneficiaries, NABARD’s Annual Report for
2011-12 (p.15) has reported that 192.59 lakh farmer borrowers of cooperative
banks and RRBs have benefited from the debt waiver scheme, of which small
and marginal farmers, consisting 83.5%, were the major beneficiaries. Out of
the
`
29,099.33 cumulatively disbursed by NABARD, the distribution was as
follows:
(i)
State Cooperative Banks
`
18,282.30 crore
(ii)
State Cooperative Agriculture and
`
3,843.37 crore
Rural Development Banks
(iii) Regional Rural Banks (RRBs)
`
6,973.66 crore
---------------------------
`
29,099.33 crore
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These are said to have covered 188 lakh farmer accounts.
As for the interest subvention scheme, additional subvention of 3% for
those farmers who repay crop loans promptly within one year of disbursement,
have involved aggregate interest subvention of
`
1,688.62 crore during 2009-10
and
`
2,097.94 crore during 2010-11; for 2011-12, the interest subvention has
been estimated at
`
3,000 crore. These relate to cooperative institutions and
RRBs covered by NABARD, but no such information is available for commercial
banks covered by the RBI. Even in respect of NABARD cases, the details of the
number of farmer accounts involved has not been revealed.
However, as brought out in a subsequent section, there are clear
indications that such knee-jerk reactions to the socio-political pressures,
arising from serious credit supply gaps, will have their repercussions on first,
the quality and purposes of lending, and second, on the processes of loan
recovery.
Trends in Relative Share of Agriculture Credit in Total Bank Credit of
Scheduled Commercial Banks
Analytically, and from the yardstick of policy goals such as ‘priority
sector’ targets (more of it later), what is more relevant is the trend in the share
